5 ms·
Though "organically" falls perpendicular to "randomly" as we've made sense of much of what has arisen over the long term in the actual organic world right? In
by detcader 7y ago
Though "organically" falls perpendicular to "randomly" as we've made sense of much of what has arisen over the long term in the actual organic world right?
In the same way many (perhaps reading Douglas Adams' puddle analogy) sided with evolution over creationist fervor, I think eventually many will begin to sympathize with the minority of thinkers who have "made sense" of why it was so important for pre-21st-century speakers to know the sex of everyone in a discussion, over an explanation that might be more incentivized...
- umanwizard 7y agoYes, there is sometimes an internal logic in the sense that it’s possible to find reasons for why language evolved in one way or another. (Historical linguistics is a field!) But that doesn’t have to follow any criteria that we might care about, like consistency or expressiveness. To stretch your biology analogy even further: sort of like how humans have an appendix. I wouldn’t try to read anything into culture based on the specific set of pronouns any language has. Turkish and (spoken) Chinese have never distinguished between “she” and “he” and it’s not because knowing someone’s sex is less important in their cultures than it is in Indo-European ones; it’s just random chance.
- detcader 7y agoI see where you're coming from but that doesn't really refute the idea for me... Some cultures didn't develop footbinding, but that doesn't disqualify footbinding as what it is. And even if they arose purely for convenience, why did they stick around? If today's populations really developed the self-reflection to operate critical of importance of sex, why are "he/his" not as weird to say as "whitey/whitey's" would be as pronouns?